Red Sky by Morning
A strong gust of wind blew Latigo Flint's hat off his head and into a street gutter. I turned to a pretty young lady who happened to be passing by. "Excuse me Ma'am, is that a street gutter?"
She followed my pointing finger. "Um, yes. Yes it is."
I scratched my chin thoughtfully. "Yep, I thought so. My hat just blew into it."
She looked back at the gutter. "It did?"
"Yeah, right into it."
"Uhh, okay."
I sighed. "There are certain to be spiders down there."
"What?!"
I sighed harder. "Spiders. There are certain to be horrible, hairy spiders down there. My hat blew off my head and rolled into that gutter and there are probably spiders down there."
She turned to go. "So leave it."
"Ma'am wait." She stopped. "What is it?!" I detected some annoyance in her voice. "Ma'am, it's my favorite hat."
She shook her head in disgust. "Fine, then man-up and go get it."
I squinted at her. "Ma'am, is your boyfriend afraid of spiders?" She initially had no idea how to respond, but then shrugged slightly to herself. "No as a matter of fact. Not that it's any of your business, but my boyfriend actually isn't afraid of spiders in the slightest."
I nodded knowingly. "Well guess what missy... if your boyfriend and I faced each other in a thousand gunfights, I would slap thigh, shuck iron and shoot him twelve times before he could even twitch, every single dern time. So what do you think about that?!"
She slowly backed away and disappeared around the corner, never taking her wary eyes off me.
I snorted angrily and turned back to the gutter. "You have my hat you wretched spiders and any minute now I'm coming to get it."
I shouted over my shoulder in the direction the young lady had departed. "I'm picturing you naked missy and there's not a dern thing you can do about it!!!"
No response. I looked back at the gutter. "Go ahead spiders, lay your egg sacs on my hat... pretty soon I'm gonna come down there and get it, and you'll lose all your babies."
An hour later I slapped thigh, shucked my gun, and shot myself in the side - 'cause that's the last thing the spiders would be expecting me to do. It worked. I crawled down into that gutter, retrieved my hat and never saw a single spider.
Are gutters relatively sterile by the way?
posted by Latigo Flint @ 2:48 AM
12 comments
12 Comments:
Gutters are no full of decayed filth that even spiders dare not tread in them.
Gutters are full of rats. It's rafters that are full of spiders.
Any time you got a spider problem, you call me. I speak their language.
In the meantime, here's some whiskey, gauze, and tape. You should clean that up before the rats come nibbling.
I've seen some of the toughest men who walk this earth flap their arms and scream like schoolgirls when walking into a spider's nest.
Spiders are a form of evil on par with trampolines and the New York Yankees.
Whata' bout potato bugs, eh?
No, not sterile. But the gutters in the Bay Area smell faintly like Axe Body Spray.
Sorry to hear you had to take a bullet for your hat. You're a man's man.
that was a good one, Latigo. I laughed at several points..most notably that you were picturing her naked. i could relate to that.
No, you might want to dab a little Neosporin on that. Or do gun slingers use Neosporin?
Gutters are sterile except on the low end of a culdesac. Those have a lot of spiders with pneumonia.
I would have retrieved your hat for ya. Spiders don't bother me a bit. Now squirrels on the other hand...
I'm with you Katiedid - Squirrels are a whole other kind of evil.
See, it's just for occasions such as this that you should pack a mini-can of Raid Special Spider Slayin' Formula up underneath that ten-gallon of yours.
You had me rollin' with the egg sac part, btw. :)
Gutters are all kinds of sterile.
Our society places entirely too much of a premium on "clean". It leads to over use of anti-bacterial products. Then you get nasty flesh eating, necrotising bacteria. It makes those of us who've lost something special to a gutter squeamish about going down to retrieve it.
I may never see my brother again.
Stupid, bastard flesh eating necrosis. And the restraing order, but that's seperate.
Point is, your hat should be fine - if not, that's why God invented Febreeze.
Steve: Good sir, would that I had your council at the time. A rather nasty staph infection could have been prevented.
You have my utmost agreement on #s one and two Other Brother. Three though? Yes it was a dark time in our history. I'm able to see the Confederacy's point of view but must side with the Union on principle. I'm sure bitterness remains, but by now shouldn't North and South accept that the other's intentions were self-preservation, not evil?
I shall never understand your irrational reaction to the Children of the Dirt my fine Carnie friend. They are completely harmless. Devoid of poison. Spiders can't say the same.
That's a very good line LBB and I wonder if perhaps it's true. Wouldn't surprise at any rate.
Well I'm glad to hear that Ho. I wasn't going to mention that part but for you.
Good God Cindy-Lou. Squinty-eyed gunslingers self-cauterize when they bother to tend to their wounds at all, and don't you forget it!
Thanks a heap Old Hoss. A coughing, sneezing spider gnawing on my face... I'm going to have nightmares for a month!
You are very kind Katiedid. I shall holler when spiders next threaten. Squirrels are little furry angels compared to spiders, and I shan't be dissuaded.
Hello Muse. If by that you mean the kind of evil you just want to hug and feed Brazil nuts to all day long.
Thanks Ari. They needed to know I was dangerous too, we both had something to lose.
In all seriousness Amandarama, you're actually right. Society's whining, sniveling trips to the doctor for antibiotics every time we sneeze could end up being the death of us all. Even now I'm re-reading The Stand by S. King for research purposes.
(Oh wait... you were talking about the baseball team weren't you Other Brother?)
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